Can Twitter predict the Academy Award winners?

If suppressed people of dictators can find Twitter as an avenue of expression, how much more for passionate discussions among movie fans. Are these discussions in any way an indication of an actor’s or movie’s popularity? Again, the question is: can it predict the winners of the Academy Awards?

If Twitter chatter is an indication, then E.Life, a social media monitoring and analysis vendor is hinting that, as of press time, Inception will win the best movie award. The Swan will come in second while The Social Network will get third. Colin Firth has 50% more tweets than Jam Franco, so he is poised to win the best actor award.

The prediction was based with the assumption that Los Angeles and New York are both reliable indicators than say Miami or Detroit.

E.Life used its Tweetmeter software to find out the possible results. It started tracking tweets in different American cities mentioning the nominees and displaying them on a U.S. map on elifemaps.com.